Quadrature VLFO Quick Minute

video upload by boxoftextures

"A quick minute with the Quadrature VLFO, from Cyberwerks Heavy Industries. Cherry Audio mentioned this somewhere a few days ago, possibly in a tweet I can no longer find, and my immediate thought was, "this will be brilliant for drones." And it is! The VLFO (the V stands for 'very') lets you make ridiculously slow LFOs, but the module also puts out three additional signals that are 90° apart from each other. Which makes it perfect for long, slow drones as each LFO can drive multiple things very, very slowly, but each output is different, because when one is high another one might be low.

So in this patch I have two VLFOs, four out-of-phase outputs in each, running at two different very slow speeds (70,000ms and 15,000ms cycles, respectively) and controlling the volume level of the eight partials in an additive VCO. And I have another VLFO (33,000ms) controlling the volume of the mixer channels of three supersaw oscillators. And just for fun I threw in a super-slow envelope generator to slowly fade the patch in and out (12 seconds in, 50 seconds out).

In a way this is a terrible demo LOL. Because a quick minute is too short to really hear the very slow changes that are happening, and I thought about just making a much simpler straight demo with much faster and more obvious changes but, well, didn't, alas. But I think you can get the idea, and see what these VLFOs are capable of. And also, they're not limited to being very slow either, just to mention it.

No external effects used, everything's in Voltage Modular.

https://store.cherryaudio.com/modules...

Mastodon: https://vmst.io/@selgart
Twitter: https://twitter.com/selgart
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/boxoftextures"

Korg Arp 2600 M Quick Minute

video upload by boxoftextures

"A quick minute with the Korg Arp 2600 M. VCO 2 and 3 playing square waves. VCO 1 as a square wave LFO, doing both pulse width modulation on VCO 2 and being the clock for the sample and hold.

No external effects used, just the 2600 M

Mastodon: https://vmst.io/@selgart
Twitter: https://twitter.com/selgart
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/boxoftextures"

AUM Keyboard Zones Quick How-To

video upload by boxoftextures

"A quick how-to on how to set up keyboard zones in AUM on the iPad. I connected a CME Xkey Air keyboard to AUM, then added three instruments—bass, piano (with far too much reverb LOL), and “guitar.”

To set up the zones you need to go to the MIDI input settings for each channel and specify the note ranges. After that you can play from the bottom of the keyboard, and as you move upwards you go from bass to piano to guitar. Or you could overlap the ranges, or layer them, or any number of other things depending on what you’re trying to accomplish."

Late night Syntrx blooping snippet

video upload by boxoftextures

"Late night Syntrx blooping. Totally internal, no external input or control."

Patching the Octave Cat

video upload by boxoftextures

"Another amazing vintage synth recreation from Cherry Audio, this time the Octave Cat. Although possibly it should really be The Cat, from Octave. Either way, it's fun to program and sounds great. Always wanted one, back in the day. They also made the Kitten, a smaller version, and the Catstick, a joystick you could hook up to your other synths. Still want one of those!

And the Cherry Audio software version is excellent. It has character, and power. And it adds an extra page the original didn't have, with effects and a sequencer. Oh, and adds polyphony too. But it was the '70s, and we didn't really have such things back then, or at least most of us didn't.

In this video I'm making four patches from scratch. As usual. What's a little different is that I usually make a few before recording a video, just to get a feel for the synth. For this one though I just dove right in, so at times it may have taken me a little while to notice things, or figure them out. But it's not an overly complicated synth so wasn't a huge issue. And it sounds great. Which I may have mentioned before LOL

Mastodon: https://vmst.io/@selgart
Twitter: https://twitter.com/selgart
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/boxoftextures"

Patching in TB Lowtone

video upload by boxoftextures

"New synth from Toneboosters, makers of Flowtones. But this is Lowtone, which they're calling an innovative bass synthesizer plug-in. TB says they're using loudness-domain harmonic synthesis in Lowtone, which is aimed at making in their words 'deeper, more consistent and production-ready bass sounds.' I haven't made any specifically bass-y patches yet but I've had a blast programming things. It has three VCOs but also a VCN, a voltage controlled noise generator, which was great fun to play with. The three VCOs have dozens of waveform variations, and there are a pile of different filter types as well. There are two xLFOs, X for extended, which I think go all the way down to 0.01 Hz (!). There's also a gate section, which is kind of like a sequencer for modulations. You can maybe use it like a regular sequencer if you like, although I haven't had a chance to try that yet, but each step can have its own shapes, giving you a lot of different sound-shaping options.

I've only made a handful of patches so far but have had great fun making them. A couple of 'normal' sounds, one haunting rhythmic drone-ish thing which I find totally mesmerizing, and one batch of absolute chaos using only the VCN as a sound source (LOL).

This particular video was done using Lowtone on the iPad, but there's also a Mac/Windows version as well so you should be able to transfer patches back and forth as needed.

Great fun, highly recommended.

Stuff use
d TB Lowtone - https://www.toneboosters.com/tb_lowto...
ScreenFlow - https://www.telestream.net/screenflow...

Mastodon: https://vmst.io/@selgart
Twitter: https://twitter.com/selgart
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/boxoftextures"

Binarhythmic Walkthrough

video upload by boxoftextures

"A new Bud app! Binarhythmic, from Cem Olcay. Binarhythmic, which seemingly has far too many H's in the name because I keep leaving some of them out, is a combination of binary and rhythmic (and I only said combination because I can't spell portmanteau LOL). It's a really interesting sequencer app as instead of beats and measures it counts in binary, with each digit (potentially) being a trigger. This opens up all sorts of possibilities, because instead of "simple" patterns of four or eight notes you're counting in binary, so 1, then 2, then 4, then 8, 16, 32, etc. So you could use three binary digits to have a kick on 1 and a snare on 4, but you can go way beyond that to have some notes be conditional on others or to "gate" notes so they play for a while until a trigger hits and then they stop, to start up again at the next trigger. Endless possibilities. And that's only with three digits. If you use eight digits your sequences can now have 128 beats. And it doesn't stop there because you're transmitting MIDI notes, so you can use them to trigger other events, such as starting/stopping other sequencers, say.

When I first tried out Binarhythmic it seemed very random—flashing lights, things happening at odd times and unpredictably. But once I got the hang of it it all started to make sense. We generally work in even measures, all with the same length for the most part, but in Binarhythmic each measure can be twice as long as the last. The beauty of this is that you can use it to trigger seemingly random events because humans just can't keep track of large numbers like 32 or 64, so if something happens once every 32 or 64 notes it feels like it might be a little out of the blue.

So a couple of video housekeeping notes. Seems I was a little careless with where I ran my headset cable and picked up a bit of hum along the way. It's not terrible, but let this be a lesson to us all. But mostly to me. Also, there's a bit of chord noise as the headset mic too easily picks up the vibrations if one is not paying attention. Again, "one" being me. And lastly, reasonably sure I was able to avoid picking up any playground wailing children noise but just in case I missed any it won't be too much of a surprise. Hopefully.

And finally, the quote intended use unquote for Binarhythmic is rhythm. So of course I did not do that and instead headed out towards some sort of ambient generative territory LOL. But fun was had along the way, and of course that just shows how usable and flexible Binarhythmic can be. Definitely worth a look.

Stuff used
Binarhythmic - http://keybudapp.com/binarhythmic
Arturia iSEM - https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-stor...
Atom Piano Roll 2 - https://apps.apple.com/us/app/atom-pi...
Pipa - https://klevgrand.se/products/pipa
Ravenscroft 275 - https://www.vilabsaudio.com/ravenscro...
Velvet Machine - https://phonolyth.com/products/velvet...
AUM - https://apps.apple.com/app/id1055636344
ScreenFlow - https://www.telestream.net/screenflow...
Audio Technica BPHS1 broadcast headset - https://www.audio-technica.com/en-us/...

Mastodon: https://vmst.io/@selgart
Twitter: https://twitter.com/selgart
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/boxoftextures"

Making a Wavestate Patch

video upload by boxoftextures

"This is all my drummer buddy's fault! LOL

Doc acquired a Wavestate, and I've always loved the original Wavestation. I even have one, but it's one of my several synthesizers that need a new display backlight, alas. But Korg came out with the Wavestate a few years ago, and they also have a software version. So I was "forced" to pick it up so I could make patches to send westward. And honestly it's amazing, capable of incredible changing textures, among many other things, of course. You can have a sequence of up to 64 samples per layer, and have them either crossfade into each other or sound discretely, and you can separately have up to 64 notes with each keypress, or just have it play the one(s) you're physically playing on the keyboard. That's per layer, and there's four of them, with a handy programmable joystick to let you fade the different layers in and out. Incredibly powerful. I have the software version, but now I'm seriously considering getting the hardware version as well.

In this video I'm making a new patch from scratch, and then I show a number of other patches I've made over the past few weeks.

E. Doctor Smith

/ @e.doctorsmith7766
Korg Wavestate native https://www.korg.com/us/products/soft...

Mastodon: https://vmst.io/@selgart Twitter: https://twitter.com/selgart Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/boxoftextures"

Wavestate Native snippet

video upload by boxoftextures

"Two patches I made this evening in Wavestate Native, played live with no overdubs."

Tera Pro BrainZ Tour

video upload by boxoftextures

"So I was planning to do a Tera Pro video this week just, well, just because. There were a good number of things that took me a while to either figure out, or perhaps just to notice, so I've been thinking of doing not a demo and not a tutorial, but more of a tour. But then they released the BrainZ module as an add-on, based on the Mutable Instruments Plaits module, that you can add to Tera Pro. So I did a tour of the basics of the BrainZ module instead, and I'll do a more general tour at a later date.

So the good part is that BrainZ adds a ton of options to Tera Pro. It's got 16 different synth models, and a good number of controls for them. Basically I set up an 8-step sequence and let it run while I went through each of the different models. So, true confession, I recorded the video, edited it, put in the labels, and only when it was more or less done was when I realized I'd gone through the models row by row, whereas the manual goes through one column and then down the next. Totally my fault! And hopefully I'm not going to confuse everyone. At least I noticed and was able to change the labels so they'd be correct. But to make matters worse, I skipped one! (15. Analog Snare Drum Model.) No idea why, but thankfully at least the one I skipped I used in my demo patch, so you at least get to hear it. Honestly I was wondering what all those crazy icons meant, and it turns out they make sense, and some of them are related to each other (the drum ones, for instance). So remember kids, read the manual first and then make your video.

Note that there's a lot more capability in BrainZ than I've shown here as I've only done some basic modulation. There's more in it than I've shown.

I totally recommend Tera Pro, and I have both of the optional add-ons (the other one being the Waves wavetable module). Once you wrap your head around the perhaps slightly unusual user interface it makes a lot of sense, and making your own patches can be very rewarding once you've gotten comfortable with it.

http://www.virsyn.net/ios/tera-pro.html

Mastodon: https://vmst.io/@selgart
Twitter: https://twitter.com/selgart
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/boxoftextures"

Sequencing Sequencers

video upload by boxoftextures

"Really powerful sequencer technique, I spent a lot of the past weekend working on variations of these sequences and am pretty stoked about it. The concept is not my original idea, was from an 'I had a breakthrough' post in one of my iPad music Facebook groups. Using one sequencer, Euclidean, not for notes but to start and stop two other sequencers, so you end up with ever-changing note patterns. Sounds amazing, really happy with the idea and with the results.

AUM as the studio, with Euclidean stopping and starting two copies of Atom Piano Roll 2, which are sending notes to two copies of iSEM. And another iSEM playing a bass sequence from Euclidean for good measure.

Euclidean, from 4Pockets - https://apps.apple.com/us/app/euclide...
Atom Piano Roll 2 - https://apps.apple.com/us/app/atom-pi...
Arturia iSEM - https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-stor...
AUM - https://apps.apple.com/app/id1055636344

One thing I neglected to mention in the video is the gate length. Default is I think 25%, which is fine for most normal purposes. But if you set it to 5% it might only play the first four notes of a 19-note sequence. But on the other hand, the reason my A sequence plays twice through before it stops is because I set the gate length to 80%, so the "note" is held for quite some time, which then means that the sequence it triggered keeps playing. Different gate lengths, different effects. I spent a good bit of time on that in the first take but completely forgot it in the second, alas.

Also, you can probably do this with any number of sequencers, doesn't necessarily have to be Euclidean and Atom Piano Roll 2. I just happen to like those.

Mastodon: https://vmst.io/@selgart
Twitter: https://twitter.com/selgart
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/boxoftextures"

Wires Walkthrough

video upload by boxoftextures

"Just got Wires, a new effect plug-in from AudioThing/Hainbach. Don't think I've done an entire video about an effect before, although now that I think of it I might have made some looper and shimmer videos. But regardless, this was great fun, instantly felt I was in some '70s Le Carre spy movie! Did this on an iPad but there's also a computer version as well (Mac/Windows/Linux) which I also have.

Basically you're running your sound through a Soviet wire recorder, and there's lots of controls to mangle things in subtle or not-so-subtle ways. Tons of fun! I used a sequencer in this demo as that was my immediately imagined use case but now I'm thinking about how it could be useful for vocals, say.

I called this video a walkthrough, which I haven't really done before. It's not exactly a demo, but it's also not a complete user guide or review either. I do demonstrate most of the controls though so you should be able to get a good idea of what's possible.

Recommended.

https://www.audiothing.net/effects/wi...

Mastodon: https://vmst.io/@selgart
Twitter: https://twitter.com/selgart
Twitter: @selgart
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/boxoftextures"

Textquencer - Text Based MIDI Sequencer

Textquencer Quick Minute video upload by boxoftextures

"Just got Textquencer, a new 'bud' from Cem Olcay. It feels like it was one of those bonkers 'hey, what if I…' ideas you get when you least expect them. Absolute madness, in the best of ways LOL

It takes your text and converts it to MIDI notes. Can be randomly chaotic, reined-in ordered, or even manually composed, if that’s your style.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/textque...

Mastodon: https://vmst.io/@selgart
Twitter: https://twitter.com/selgart
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/boxoftextures"

via http://keybudapp.com/textquencer

"Textquencer is a text-based MIDI Sequencer. It creates MIDI sequences from the plain text!

Each letter in the alphabeth triggers a note in the scale you are working.

Letter A triggers the Note C (the first note) in the C-Major Scale
Letter B triggers the Note D (the second note)
Letter C triggers the Note E (the third note)
Letter H triggers the Note C but an octave higher"

Korg Modwave Quick Minute

video upload by boxoftextures

"Just got the new Korg Modwave Native synth app. I have wavetable synths both hardware and software, but this one is just fantastic. Haven't even had near enough time to go deep on it yet but it's reasonably straightforward to work with (although I'll still read the manual as there's tons of stuff here). Hundreds of wavetables, and samples as well, which I haven't even gotten to yet. And 2,000 modulation slots (!). Gosh, I hope that's enough LOL.
Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@selgart
Twitter: https://twitter.com/selgart
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/boxoftextures"

The iPad Composite DAW, or, How To Easily Create An Entire Recording Studio On Your iPad

video upload by boxoftextures

"'The iPad Composite DAW'
Built with AUM, Audiobus, and Audio Evolution

This one's a bit of a long one, and I've been meaning to do it for a while. Basically this is a how-to on how I'm using AUM to host my plug-ins, then using Audiobus to route the audio out of AUM into my DAW of choice, which in my case is Audio Evolution Mobile Studio. This essentially lets me turn my iPad into a completely self-contained studio environment. There's a number of steps to get it going, but nothing too difficult, and it all makes sense once you get used to the idea. And it just works! Using these three apps together takes care of sending the audio where it needs to go and configuring almost everything pretty much on its own. It's almost hard to believe how well it works.

Featuring
AUM
Audiobus
Audio Evolution Mobile Studio

With Special Guests
Atom Piano Roll 2
ButterSynth
Pipa

Voiceover recorded using a
Sennheiser XS Lav USB-C microphone

Edited in ScreenFlow

Twitter: https://twitter.com/selgart
Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@selgart (although I may change to a different instance)
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/boxoftextures"

Patching in Sines

video upload by boxoftextures

"Sines, a new synthesizer from Cherry Audio. They're on a serious roll this year with new stuff! At first glance there's a billion controls and it seems like you'll never figure it out, but once you spend a few minutes with it things turn out to make a lot of sense. You have four oscillators, four LFOs, four envelope generators, and four slots in the modulation matrix. That last one may seem like an oddly small number but almost every control has its own mod routing, so in a way those four are like a few bonus extra ones.

The oscillators are, well, unique. For one, there's no waveshapes to choose from, it's all and only sine waves. Which seems odd at first! But like the mod matrix, you have a lot of controls to mess with the sines and create all kinds of different tones. It only took a few minutes of knob twiddling to see how it worked, and there's lots of possibility in the design. With all the modulation and tone shaping you can do I found that most of my early patches used only one oscillator. They just sound that rich. One of the patches in the video uses three of them, and I almost had to force myself to do that. And in fact, I'm planning on going back into that one and splitting it up, using the first two oscillators in a new patch and the third one in another.

So bottom line is that at first glance everything about Sines is just weird. Which is true! But it all makes sense and is really well designed, and the sound design possibilities are pretty deep.

As always, all patches are mine, and the end theme under the credits is two of the patches from the video over top of the drone I always use in my opening titles (which I made sometime in the distant past)."

Miniverse Module Set Quick Look

video upload by boxoftextures

"Well they did this one backwards, it seems. Usually Cherry Audio tweets out new product teases a week in advance, then they have a 30-second video reveal here on YouTube while at the same time putting the new thing up for sale on their web site. Which is all fine! But this time there wasn't a pre-announcement (although it's possible I just happened to miss it), and there wasn't a short video reveal, or a tweet or anything. I just happened to see there was a new Cherry Audio video on here and there it was. So I bought the Miniverse Module set for Voltage Modular and made a quick Mini. And here it is.

So far I've only built a 'Mini' with just a few effects, but again, because these are modules you can do all sorts of gnarly things with them. Which I shall proceed to do over the next few days. I mean, just being able to add three more envelope generators and half a dozen more LFOs make this worth the price of admission. And that's not even counting the polyphonic Mini module versions, which I haven't even had time to try out yet. Like I said, more to come.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/selgart
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/boxoftextures"

Quick Demo of Five Augmented Voices Patches

video upload by boxoftextures

"Quick demo of five Augmented Voices patches I've made. Augmented Voices, along with Augmented Strings, are two of the new synths included in the just released Arturia V Collection version 9. Similar(ish) programming interface to Pigments, each patch has two layers, one "voice-y" layer and one "synth-y" layer, and each of those has two sound sources, kind of like oscillator equivalents. In a way they're simple to program but they're at the same time pretty deep as well. Lots of flexibility and all sorts of things you can do with the controls. Looking forward to spending more time with the Augmenteds.

Note that this is the very short version of this video just to demo the patches. There'll be a longer version in a few days that shows two of the patches being made start to finish.

All patches are mine, and the end theme under the credits is one of the patches from the video.

Recorded and edited in ScreenFlow https://www.telestream.net/screenflow/
Audio routing done in Rogue Amoeba Loopback https://rogueamoeba.com/loopback/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/selgart Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/boxoftextures"

Chromaphone Quick Patch Demo

video upload by boxoftextures

"Quick demo of some Chromaphone patches I've made. Was minding my own business when it occurred to me that my drummer buddy could make use of some of these patches. So I figured I'd make a 20 second demo so I could show him what I was thinking and then a few hours later somehow ended up here with a complete (quick) demo. It happens, I guess.

All patches are mine, and the end theme under the credits is 100% Chromaphone.

Featuring:
Chromaphone, from Applied Acoustics Systems https://www.applied-acoustics.com/chr...

Recorded and edited in ScreenFlow https://www.telestream.net/screenflow/
Audio routing done in Rogue Amoeba Loopback https://rogueamoeba.com/loopback/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/selgart
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/boxoftextures"

Random Sequence Lengths

video upload by boxoftextures

Follow-up to this post.

"So I was minding my business the other day and checking out Matrixsynth.com, as one does, and came across a post about a video from OZ Hall. He had patched up a Eurorack version of a 960 sequencer so it would vary the sequence lengths. I hadn't even watched the video yet but just from what was in the description I was able to see the whole setup laid out before my eyes. I could make this work in Voltage Modular with randomized sequence lengths picked automatically each time through the sequence. So I set to work and an hour late I had this patch, and in this video I go through it step by step to show how it all works.

The major difference between my version and what OZ Hall did is that I added a Random Task module and a couple of switcher modules so it could switch sequence length on its own without me having to manually do it. Could totally be done in hardware given the proper modules, of course.

To make this work what I've done is to connect each sequencer step's trigger output jack to an input on a switching module. Then, every time the sequencer hits step 1 it sends a clock to the Random Task module, which makes it pick a random voltage. That gets sent to the 1x8 Switch module which picks the output based on the voltage level. That voltage gets sent to the switching module which sends a voltage for the chosen step into the buss module and then on to the trigger input of the sequencer, forcing it to start over from step 1.

So every time the sequencer hits step 1 it essentially picks the step which triggers the reset to step 1 and you get random sequence lengths, picked by the Random Task.

So I'd like to thank both Matrix and OZ Hall, and there are links below to both the post on Matrixsynth.com and to the YouTube video that set all the bells off in my head.

Matrixsynth post: https://www.matrixsynth.com/2022/04/b...
OZ Hall video: https://youtu.be/1RBgkFnQRe0https://youtu.be/1RBgkFnQRe0

Modules used:
From Cherry Audio
960 Sequential Controller
962 Sequential Switch
Random Task
1x8 Switch
SynthVoice
Mini LFO
Stereo Delay

From Andrew Macaulay
Micro MixBus
Fixed DC

From Playertron
Switchboard

From haslo
HÄÄSchen

Lastly, just to make this super clear as I don't explicitly bring it up in the video, say you want to have a four step sequence. In that case, you'd want to patch the output jack of step 5 to the input jack of step one, What we're doing with the switching mechanism is having *all* the output jacks connected at once through the buss but we're letting the Random Task module choose which switch it closes on the switching module to let one of those signals through. So in a sense we're using a module to repatch the bottom row of jacks on the sequencer on the fly.

Featuring
Cherry Audio Voltage Modular https://cherryaudio.com/products/volt...

Recorded and edited in ScreenFlow https://www.telestream.net/screenflow/
Audio routing done in Rogue Amoeba Loopback https://rogueamoeba.com/loopback/
Sennheiser XS Lav USB-C microphone https://en-us.sennheiser.com/xs-lav-u...

Twitter: https://twitter.com/selgart
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/boxoftextures"